Shy Shills place on the web

Years ago I worked with a real estate broker who had a contract with a large national chain of movie theaters. She would always be flying all over the damned country to scout new locations for the ever growing theater chain. The last trip that she took while I was at the company was to the Rio Grande Valley. So this gave me an opportunity to learn a little about the most southern cities in Texas, but just enough to be dangerous.

The area just north of the border with Mexico known as the Rio Grande Valley includes the cities of Edinburg, McAllen, Weslaco and Harlingen. If you include the cities just south of the border in Mexico, this area has a substantial population of over 2 million people. Harlingen is the easternmost city of the four, at the intersection of Highway 77 and Highway 83. This appears to be the retail hub of the valley, with retail sales per capita above $8,000. This is a very healthy number and made the area very attractive to the movie theater executives.

There is so much shit going on when real estate is involved, that so many people don’t even realize is going on, that It can and does, take years and years of research and meetings before any shovel (or other heavy duty equipment) hits the ground to start the actual building on the site. I learned so much at that job. If the market hadn’t taken such a fucking dive back in the fucked up year or 2007 I just might have continued on with that type of career path, with that particular company or gone out on my own by now.. Guess we will never know.